Valter Longo, PhD, is my bet to be the first Nobel Prize winner on the Plant Yourself Podcast.
He’s a longevity researcher at the University of Southern California whose broad vision and ability to focus on the details of scientific enquiry over a 30-year career may provide the data we need to extend the human lifespan by decades.
Read More
A thought experiment: you walk into a restaurant wanting to encourage the patrons waiting on line to order – total strangers – to choose a plant-based option for lunch? And you can tell them one fact. What would it be, and how would you say it?
Take your time; I’ll wait.
[Jeopardy theme plays]
Read More
Gregory Walton has done some of the most groundbreaking social science research of the past decade. His “Wise Interventions” model utilizes brief, targeted experiences to permanently alter a mindset and create a cascading series of life events.
Read More
Fraser Bayley’s arc of transformation is long and inspiring. Growing up in Auckland, New Zealand, Fraser was a poor student who struggled in school despite putting in the effort. He felt stupid, like something was wrong with him. His social anxiety was so severe, he dropped out of college but managed to keep a crushing load of student debt.
When an after school job at a local supermarket offered him a chance to learn about butchery, Fraser jumped on the opportunity to apprentice himself in the grueling trade. It didn’t require smarts, or much reading, or sitting still.
Butchery was (and still is) a male-dominated field, where toxic masculinity is both a prerequisite and outcome of the brutal, repetitive, soul-numbing work. Fraser suffered from bipolar episodes, which he self-medicated through alcohol, drugs, and the company of other alienated, emotionally scarred, alpha males.
Read More
Eric Krieg spent decades in the belly of the beast; the benefits industry beast, that is. Until one day he asked a profoundly inconvenient question: “Am I doing the right thing?”
By way of answer, he left his job as a traditional broker and went rogue, revealing the ethically questionable practices of the benefits industry to the world.
And, putting his career where his mouth is, he formed the anti-brokerage: Risk International, a firm that advises companies on how to navigate the benefits industry, and make decisions in their own best interests. Rather than getting paid on commission, Risk International is fee-for-service; a rare case of financial transparency in the health benefits world.
Read More
Dave Chase is one of those quiet innovators who moves mountains through vision, energy, and sheer persistence. With a healthy dose of trickster energy in the mix…
Chase is the founder of Healthcare Rosetta, a non-profit dedicated to accelerating “adoption of simple, practical, non-partisan fixes to our healthcare system.”
Read More
Bethany Stec Janicek grew up on a Nebraska pig farm, on a diet of meat and dairy and cheese and butter. Always bigger than her peers, she began dieting in elementary school, and suffered the anguish that came with always failing, always giving up, and always feeling disappointed in herself.
She was deeply disconnected from her true self, and masked her sense of inadequacy with a bubbly exterior and various coping mechanisms: food, cigarettes alcohol, clothing, and makeup. Everything in her life was literally or figuratively sugar-coated.
Read More
Lesley Paterson, the “Scottish Rocket,” is a three-time world champion in off-road triathlon, an Ironman triathlon champ, a professional mountain biker, an athletic coach, and a world-class slinger of profanity.
Simon Marshall, her husband, is a sport and exercise psychologist at San Diego State, performance psychologist for BMC Racing, and a self-described “mid-pack endurance athlete.”
Together, Lesley and Simon comprise Braveheart Coaching, a service that gets athletes performing to their potential in spite of the “3-pound lump of crazy” that lives in their cranium.
Read More
This episode is special to me, as I share the next phase of my journey and mission.
I’ve just joined WellStart Health as a co-founder, along with CEO Olivia Kelly, Chief Medical Officer Bojana Jankovic Weatherly, and Chief Brand Ambassador Josh LaJaunie. Our mission is, in Olivia’s words, to “put chronic disease out of business.”
We’re doing this through a potent combo of evidence-based protocols (like, eat more whole plants and less garbage), behavioral science (my title is Chief Behavioral Science Officer), crackerjack technology, and a network of coaches like Josh who have street cred based on their own struggles and journeys.
Read More
When Matthew Prescott was 12, his older sister came home from school one day and announced that she had decided to become a “vegetarian,” whatever that was.
In the grand tradition of little brothers everywhere, Matthew made sure to stick his forkful of beef under nose at the dinner table while making mooing sounds. But he also tried her bean burritos, veggie burgers, and other plant-based alternatives to meat, and found that they were actually pretty good. And when he looked at her reasons for ditching meat, he had to admit that they made a lot of sense.
Read More
